ok guys - here goes.
This is going to be long - but before you read to the end and get disappointed I'll let you know now - although we can understand (to a large amount - tho not completely) HOW these
holes make some people react badly - I'm still unable to find out exactly WHY they do - but I've got an idea that I think is, at best, a bloody good guess!
If that's not clear - then read on and hopefully this will all make some sense..... !
TrypophobiaThe word appears to have been created by "Loopy Lou" in 2005. See
here for her version of the origins.
Searches of my work related science databases came up with 0 hits for the word!
But that didn't stop me.
What causes me to feel yuk when I see these things?My search for an explanation has lead me to understand some basic things:
The reaction in trypophobia is not so much "fear" as in a developed phobia from a trauma or experience, the like that causes the 'fight or flight or freeze' adrenalin reaction. This is more a reaction of "
disgust" that is likely to be something of a different sort of basic instinctive reaction; or emotion.
This is a significant issue because it means we're not looking for something where we might have 'learned' to avoid a bad thing from a bad experience how most phobias are formed (ie something happened, it made us feel bad, we remember the feeling in our memory and we avoid doing things like that again because we believe it will make us feel that way again) - but we are instinctively reacting to something our brain doesn't like the look of as part of our built-in defence mechanism.
However, even tho there is no direct external 'trauma' event, the way we react can cause us to become 'conditioned' to continue to respond this way so it's important in resolving this phobia to realise our behaviour is reinforcing the problem each time we end up avoiding looking at the object.
Studies of brain activity using "
functional neuroimaging" helps us to see how the brain reacts to certain events.
Recently (last 5-10 years) they've been exploring more about what happens when we're "disgusted" and why.
There are specific parts of the brain involved in emotions - and disgust is no different in this way.
Disgust is as strong an emotion as anger, hate, fear, happiness. But it's behaviour pattern in the brain is different - as seem to be all emotions.
It shows up in places called - the cingulate gyrus; (anterior - or front part) insular cortex and the limbic system (which is commonly associated with 'mood'). There's more to it than that - but that's enough for us to think about!
Here's a good description of "disgust" that saves me typing it all out -
Quote:
Why do some sounds disgust us?How many of you were told as a child to “Keep your mouth shut when you’re eating”? Imagine watching someone chomp on an apple. They keep opening their mouth and you can hear the food being churned around in their mouth. Pretty horrible isn’t it?
Disgust is a strong human emotion which can be caused by what we see, smell, touch, taste and hear. While there hasn't been much research into why sounds disgust us, we can probably learn from other research into what triggers disgust. Curtis, Aunger and Rabie used a web based survey of 40,000 people to look at what causes a visual disgust response and why.
Disgust is a common reaction to many things whether that be the sound of someone vomiting, or the sight of pus, wounds and corpses. It is common in all cultures. Disgust can lower blood pressure and cause nausea, shuddering and make people take evasive action. The disgust reaction is thought to arise as a method to avoid illness. For instance, other people's bodily excretions and secretions are avoided because they can contain high concentrations of pathogens which could enter your body. Curtis found that disgust was more pronounced in females, probably because females play a double role in protecting both self and offspring from disease. They also found that the disgust response decreases as people get older and as an individual’s chances of having children declines. You are also more likely to be disgusted by strangers, because they may carry new diseases that you have no immunity to.
There is a strong social element to disgust. You might be disgusted by immoral or unfair acts. However, deep down there is strong evidence that we evolved to have a disgust response primarily to avoid disease. So the next time you feel disgust at that horrible phlegmy cough you can hear, you'll know how important this reaction is to mankind.
So "disgust" exists as an emotion to keep us safe.
But why do some people react to things that clearly aren't dangerous?
There's a thing called "Disgust Sensitivity" - and basically some of us appear to be simply more sensitive to some things than others. Cool - we're all different ~ YaY!
[We knew that tho!]
So how does this relate to Trypophobia and the patterns?My suspicion, for the most part (tho this may not explain all cases of Trypophobia) is that the clustering and pattern effects are a subconscious trigger to the brain to warn us of potential disease.
Some of the images people have said they are disgusted by relate to animals or humans with patterns on them.
The breast and knees pictures (even tho they're fake) - look like a disease on a person.
The random patterns of nature may indicate danger - like the patterns on
a poisonous dart frog.
Warning - image may trigger disgust.
Even more recent examples like Jennifer and the Hogie Sandwich (hi Jennifer
) and the bubbles underneath would fit this idea - especially if it looked 'unnatural' or was out of place.
Anything 'unnatural' looking we're averse to; we are cautious of - even strangers (people we're not familiar with - we do not readily recognise them so their features are 'unnatural' to us unlike someone we're familiar with). This causes us to react differently to strangers than we do to familiar friends.
It's instinctive behaviour to preserve our own safety - To not trust something that we don't think we should trust the look of.
So there's my theory -
Disgust is the instinctive reaction of the mind to warn us to avoid things that we think might be dangerous to us. One of those ways we instinctively recognise 'warnings' is patterns and markings in nature that appear unnatural or irregular. When we see things that disgust us - we look away. Often we cover our mouth.
Another stimulus is smell - and when we smell nasty things - we screw our face up - close our eyes; shrink our nose and tense our lips - Because we're stopping the germs/smells getting in!
These reactions are the body's normal defence methods.
Trypophobia is when that reaction starts to 'spill out' to other things we associate with like patterned dangerous things - tho the objects we look at are not actually dangerous.
The physiology of [the disgust] reactionWhen we have a stimulus (ie touch, hear, see, smell or taste) our mind responds.
When it comes to safety issues - it does so faster than we can think about the response and even makes us behave faster than we realise (think of touching a hot iron - you actually move your hand away before you register the 'pain/heat' in your head - something called the spinal arc does that so the message doesn't have to go to the 'thinking' part of the brain which would be too slow)
When we see things we don't like - we react just the same.
If someone jumps out on us - or a scary face - or we see blood or urine - we react. It's instinct and we can't stop ourselves (unless we have a little practice at doing it).
In disgust we screw our faces up, turn away, cover our mouths.
Next time you look at something you find disgusting - stop and notice how your body simply 'reacts' without you thinking about it.
In Trypophobia - we react just the same way. We see something we register as 'disgusting' - and we react with the same physical behaviours.
The thing is - these objects are usually harmless. That's what makes it irrational - and thus it is a genuine phobia.
The behaviour, if left unchallenged, becomes habit and will not change because we are conditioning/teaching ourselves to behave that way every time we see something that evokes the 'disgust' reaction.
So next time we see an unnatural pattern, marking or other 'trigger' - we've practiced being 'disgusted' - we know what to do - we do what we did last time - so we do it again -
Look away
Screw your face up
Cover your mouth
And give out a "yuk" or even wretch (to purge the inners of any potential pathogens/poisons ingested - yeah I know it's yuk - but it's there to save our lives!)
This is an important step in understanding how to overcome the 'disgust' response.
The cure?An easy cure for this is 'systematic desensitisation' - or "getting over it bit by bit til it just don't bother you no more" - but, in this case, doing it in a set way from beginning to end on each occasion
1. When you see something that causes the disgust response - you will react.
2. But once we've overcome the initial shock - you need to look again without the reaction.
3. Realise that the emotion you had just then was probably a reaction to fear of disease or that it was simply not what you were expecting.
4. Look at it again calmly - and check to see if you're still feeling the same - or perhaps just a little less worried about it.
5. Keep doing this til the feeling becomes almost nothing.
6. Then study the object. Really examine it and make a logical decision - is this harmful?
7. Then look away and look again. See how your final reaction differs to your initial reaction.
This will work in two ways:
1. It stops you simply seeing something - then reacting with disgust - which is teaching yourself to continue being disgusted at these things.
2. It teaches you to, instead, recognise the gut reaction; understand and overcome it - and then react rationally towards the object ie - is it dangerous or not? BTW - chances are that if it IS dangerous - you will be long gone; you're not that silly! If it is just disgusting to look at - then follow the processes above and become desensitised to it.
I hope that offers some understanding, support and help to anyone who has this phobia.
I am also happy for anyone to agree or disagree with this. It's not complete science - but it's a very close second.
I'm not really the first to come up with this as 'visual disgust' has been researched for a number of years. Tho I believe oFear is the place to pull some of this stuff together on the origins, causes and nature of Trypophobia as a genuine phobia.
There's
a very good article here by Dr Val Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the evolution of 'Disgust' as a method of protection and survival; though she does not write specifically about Trypophobia - her theory of reactions to perceived visual threats as a basic survival instinct supports the oFear suggestion that Trypophobia may be a false (or over-) reaction (or excessive sensitivity) to potential threats as determined by their visual presentation.
Dr Curtis also has the original online 'sensitivity test' that she used for her study of over 40,000 people available
here if anyone wants to check themselves out.
I'd be interested to know how you get on if you do.
More reading on the subjects on Disgust are also on the BBC website. Here is one I found very interesting that lead me to Dr Curtis' work.
WARNING - if you do click on the link - there's a lavae pic there that might trigger a disgust reaction.
But if it does trigger - there's a good opportunity to practice the desensitisation!!
"
Total Recoil"
Quote:
Chances are, there's a special something that's guaranteed to turn your stomach. Perhaps it's the sight and smell of a decomposing pigeon at the side of the pavement, maggots wriggling from its vacant eye sockets.
Or perhaps you squirm whenever you think of your grandma's mucky dentures by her bedside.
Whatever your pet hate, disgust is a basic emotion common to all humans. But for decades, nobody really understood why it existed. Scientists now believe we can find the answer by examining the things that disgust us.
At the end of the 1990s, Dr Valerie Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine began to survey people in different countries to find out what things they found disgusting. Curtis uncovered some interesting cultural peculiarities. For example, food cooked by a menstruating woman was a frequent cause of disgust in India. While fat people scored highly as disgusting in the Netherlands.
Out of sight, out of mind
Crucial to this instinctive reaction are visual rules of thumb, which we use to decide what is and isn't a disease threat.
Visual cues are so powerful, we often squirm at the sight of things we know are harmless, simply because they happen to look like a disease threat.
Take worms for example. While many species of worm are harmless - like the humble earthworm - some have evolved to become human gut parasites. Over millions of years, we have evolved an instinctive avoidance of gut parasites in animal meat. And this same visual aversion to long, slimy, wriggly animals makes us squirm at the harmless earthworm
MRI scans also reveal that we use a special part of the brain when we get disgusted: the anterior insular cortex.
Curtis has even claimed that disgust could have been one of the first words uttered by humans. "The word 'yuck' is similar in languages all over the world. It seems to be a proto-word," says Curtis.
Despite rapid advances in medicine, disease still poses an unprecedented threat to human life in the 21st century. If disgust really is as crucial to our survival as some scientists believe, then we're likely to be saying yuck for a very long time to come.
For more info - I'm also watching this website:
http://www.trypophobia.com/ which is also something to do with Loopy Lou I believe.
I must email her and swap notes!
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